What is the biggest difference between East and West in the development of epistemology?

I. East-West Culture in the Eyes of Chinese Scholars

Accession to the WTO has confronted China with unprecedented challenges, not only in the economic and technological fields, but also, and more importantly, with the accelerated pace of China's opening up to the outside world, our culture is undergoing profound changes. the experience of China's development in the twentieth century has taught us that the deadlocked old-fashioned approach to traditions and the wholesale westernization of the past will bring catastrophic consequences to the development of Chinese society. The experience of China's development in the twentieth century tells us that both rigid adherence to tradition and wholesale westernization will bring disastrous consequences to the development of Chinese society. In an article entitled "On the Complementary Relationship between Eastern and Western Cultures", Mr. Ji Xianlin used the phrase "Thirty Years East of the River, Thirty Years West of the River" to describe the historical changes of Eastern and Western cultures. He believes that in the 21st century, the Western culture, which is mainly based on metaphysical analysis, has come to an end, and in its place will inevitably come the Eastern culture, which is characterized by synthesis. Therefore, he proposed that when dealing with the relationship between Western and Chinese cultures, on the one hand, we should pay attention to absorbing all the good things in Western culture, including material and spiritual, and change our values and ways of thinking by "bringing them to us"; on the other hand, we should inherit and carry forward the reasonable components of Chinese culture, so that the Eastern civilization can make its contribution to the development of mankind. On the other hand, we should inherit and carry forward the reasonable elements of Chinese culture, so that the Oriental civilization for the development of mankind to make its due contribution.

Tang Yijie further elaborated on the root causes of the rise and fall of Chinese culture from the aspect of the role of human beings in cultural inheritance. He pointed out that: in the 20th century, the emergence of the "wholesale westernization" trend, so that China has lost a certain degree of self-confidence in their own culture, the Chinese people in the absorption of foreign cultures have a strong sense of self-consciousness and initiative, but in the dissemination of their own culture lack of such self-consciousness and initiative. This situation is related to the national character of the Chinese people. Historically, the Chinese were able to treat foreign cultures with tolerance, but the Chinese lacked the enterprising spirit to go outward. This situation is related to the "great power mentality" of China when it was strong. It was thought that it was only natural for other people to come to us to learn from us, and that there was no need for us to go to them to spread Chinese culture. In the last two centuries, with the rise of our Western countries, our arrogance has begun to degenerate into an inferiority complex, and we feel that we are lagging behind in every way. In fact, both this arrogance and inferiority complex are indicative of the lack of an enterprising spirit in Chinese culture. How can this be changed? Mr. Tang pointed out that we need to change our attitude towards cultural issues. On the one hand, we need to be "selective" in dealing with foreign cultures, and choose what we really need from other cultures; on the other hand, we also need to transmit Chinese culture to other parts of the world with a conscious and enterprising spirit, so that other countries can understand China and Chinese culture. China and Chinese culture. This view of two-way cultural exchanges was generally endorsed, with Shweder pointing out that in today's world there is no socio-cultural environment whose existence and people's identification with it can be independent of other ways, and that the world is a pluralistic world in which cultures interact with each other, albeit with different sizes of roles. The views of Mr. Ji and Mr. Tang, among others, reflect the historical thinking of Oriental thinking on the rise and fall of culture, and are of great significance in guiding the inheritance and development of Chinese culture.

The cultural conception of "modernization theory"

In fact, Western scholars have recognized the influence of Chinese culture much earlier than we have, even though these understandings have the limitations of history and value judgment. As early as the 1950s, a large group of Western sinologists noticed the influence of traditional Chinese culture, and the popular "modernization theory" put forward by Fairbank, Levenson and Wright challenged the role of traditional Chinese culture. By comparing modern China and Japan, these scholars wanted to find out why Japan's modernization reforms succeeded in the decades after the Meiji Restoration, while China, which started modernization earlier than Japan, failed. After analyzing the economic, social, political, and cultural factors in nineteenth-century China, they pointed out that the failure of China's modernization was mainly due to Confucianism-the conflict between the stability and unity demanded by Confucianism and the changes required by modernization.Wright went so far as to assert that," Even under the most favorable conditions, a Confucian society cannot be incorporated into a modernized state."

To justify this theory, Fairbank first analyzes it from the point of view of culture and personality, arguing that: the Chinese tradition is very collective (meaning the family rather than the state), emphasizes obedience to authority, and fails to cultivate an independent and autonomous personality. The motivational pattern of Chinese culture is dependent rather than autonomous, and this tradition produces people who are only suitable for an agrarian society, not for the requirements of an industrial society. Another scholar, Hagen, expressed the same view in his book On the theory of social change. He used the question of whether a society could develop creative personalities to analyze whether a country's economy could develop. He argued that it is very difficult to develop creative personalities in a conservative society, and that without such people, there is no way to talk about social development.

Max Weber's analysis of Chinese culture from a religious perspective expresses similar claims. In his book, Confucianism and Taoism, he sharply criticized Confucianism. Confucian ethics, he argued, lacked the tension between nature and God, ethical imperatives and human weaknesses, guilt and the quest for transcendence, worldly behavior and transcendental atonement, as well as religious duty and social reality, and thus there was no leverage to make one's inner strength transcend tradition. In other words, too much emphasis on harmony-especially the unity of heaven, earth, and man-has left a lack of tension between man and society and nature, and thus no possibility of cultivating a reasonable spirit of overcoming the outside world. In contrast to Confucian ethics, the Christian and especially the Puritan notion of believing in original sin and seeking to overcome it led to the development of a set of religious disciplines for overcoming inner sins. This kung fu extends to norms, customs, and authority, so that one does not simply follow blindly, but rather thinks about ways to improve. weber's interpretation of the structure of Chinese society and of Confucian ethics is very original, and his basic ideas have become the basis for Western scholars to analyze and study the problems of China.

"Modernization theory" also seeks a "panacea" for the further development of Chinese society from the critique of Confucianism. Fairbank points out that Confucianism has hindered China's development, as social development must be supported by theory. development of China. For China to develop, then, it must have another set of ideas, which intellectuals need to find in Western culture. The theory was once popular in the 1960s and 1970s. The theory of "modernization" has had an important influence on the development of Chinese society, and all the social trends since the 1980s are undoubtedly related to its influence. However, the "modernization theory" is not a panacea for China's social development problems. Criticism of the theory began at the same time as its popularity. According to the critics, the "modernization theory" is extremely one-sided in its analysis of Confucian ethics. Confucianism, with its emphasis on "propriety" and "harmony", is not just a cosmetic or face-saving matter, as the abovementioned scholars have said. It is not just a matter of appearance or face, as the above scholars have said. In fact, there is a personal motivation to strive for advancement in Confucian ethics, unlike the lack of such motivation as claimed by Fairbank. Bary and Metzger argue that Confucian ethics emphasizes the autonomy of the individual and his or her morality, and while there is certainly a "goodness of nature", there is also a lack of tension between the individual and the external environment, such as in the case of the "goodness of nature," as claimed by Weber. But it does not lack the tension between the individual and the external environment, as Weber claims, for example, there is a tension between the "Divine Principle" and the "human desires". The economic prosperity of East Asia also strongly refutes the theory of modernization, and Kahn points out that "post-Confucianism" is the foundation and guarantee of the economic development of East Asia.

The "modernization theory" and the debates it has generated will continue, with reasonable generalizations and extrapolations about Chinese culture, but also with many biases. Its reasonableness is intrinsically linked to Mr. Tang's analysis of Chinese cultural initiative, which is evident in our cultural exchanges with the West. While learning from Western technological civilization, have we ever considered exporting our culture and values? On this point, the Americans are indeed unambiguous. The United States Government has made it clear that they want to promote their own culture and values to the whole world. In fact, this issue has already attracted the attention of many cultural researchers. As an ancient civilization, China has its own thinking characteristics and values, and in the context of economic globalization, learning from the West about their advanced science and technology can help improve our competitiveness. But if we fail to carry forward our own fine culture in such exchanges, we will eventually lose ourselves.

Similar to the modernization theory, psychologists' studies of individualism and collectivism in the early 1980s reflected a bias against Eastern cultures. When he analyzed the data he collected, he found an interesting phenomenon: there is a close relationship between a country's level of economic development and the work values of its employees, with countries that emphasize individual achievement and personal power having a higher level of economic development, and those that emphasize group goals and interpersonal harmony having a lower level of economic development. Therefore, he believed that it is cultural values that influence people's work motivation and achievement level, and ultimately determines a country's economic development.Hofstede's research aroused great interest among cultural psychologists, and to this day, there are still many researchers interested in this issue.

Three: East-West Cultural Exchange in the Framework of Cultural Psychology

In order to inherit and promote our culture in economic globalization, we also need to figure out the problem of the influence mechanism of chu culture. Since the 1960s, researchers in cultural anthropology have begun to explore the issue of cultural influence with a phenomenological approach. Taking the mode of cultural transmission as the main line, they summarized four characteristics of the mutual influence of different cultures: ① Selectivity: when two cultures come into contact, not all cultural elements are exchanged with each other. There are some cultural elements that are easily accepted by other cultures and others that are not easily transmitted. In other words, only a small proportion of the easily transmitted cultural components pass from one culture to another. ② Mutuality: Cultural influence is a two-way process in which strong and weak cultures influence each other. The existence of any non-mainstream culture in the world has its inevitability, and it will not be completely assimilated in the exchange with the mainstream culture. (iii) Adaptation: Once a cultural component is integrated into another new culture, its form and function will undergo some changes, but this adaptation does not indicate a complete change of the old cultural component. Sometimes this change is only for temporary adaptation and the essentials may not be changed. ④ Non-equivalence: some cultural components are more easily transmitted than others, and material culture is more easily transmitted than culture in the ideological sphere.

From these characteristics, although the exchange of Eastern and Western cultures is a two-way process, it is more reflective of the strong influence of Western culture on Eastern culture, and this concept is most clearly reflected in the "world system theory", which was put forward by Wallerstein in the 1970s and 1980s. Wallerstein's "World System Theory" in the 1970s and 1980s elaborated on the effects and mechanisms of cultural influence. According to his theory, all countries in today's world are in a system of power determined by politics and economics. In this system, some countries are at the center of power, while others are at the periphery. A country's position in this system is mainly determined by its own economic and political status. For nearly a century, Western powers such as Europe and the United States have been at the center of the system, while non-Western developing countries (especially most of those in Asia and Africa) have been on the periphery of the system. Countries at the core have had more influence than those at the periphery. In discussing the implications of this difference in status, Wallerstein points out that such economic and political differences often lead to cultural and academic differences - culturally and academically, the core countries have a dominant influence over the peripheral countries - but he also recognizes that the peripheral countries also influence the core countries to a certain extent, although he also acknowledges that the peripheral countries also influence the peripheral countries to a certain extent. on countries at the core, although this influence is less than that of the former.

World-systems theory reveals a new perspective on the mechanisms of cultural influence - that is, the influence of culture is related to economics and politics. This theory is supported by some psychological research, for example, before the 1970s, Japan is often seen as one of the representatives of collectivism, but in the 1990s a period of Japanese scholars found that Japanese young students tend to individualism is even higher than the Americans, these scholars believe that cultural interactions are the root of this transformation. The influence of foreign cultures in daily life can also prove this theory to a certain extent, as reflected, for example, in contemporary Chinese youth's admiration for the cultures of neighboring countries. In essence, Wallerstein's theory is in line with the Marxist theory that the economic base determines the superstructure. From another perspective, the "world system theory" makes us optimistic about the influence of Chinese culture, which, according to this theory, will move from the periphery to the center as China's economy grows and its political status improves. Economists believe that the 21st century will be an era of economic splendor for East Asia, and this economic development will surely lead to a greater influence of our culture on a global scale.

Optimism is optimistic, but such splendor cannot wait. The "world system theory" emphasizes the central role of culture between culture and economy, which is the opposite of the "modernization theory" emphasizing the impact of culture on economic development, how to deal with this difference in views? To deal with this problem, we need to look at the trajectory of the development of Eastern and Western civilizations, and in the second half of the 1990s, a group of psychologists concerned with the impact of culture finally found a new way of understanding the differences between the East and the West, which is the study of Eastern and Western ways of thinking. In the view of some cultural psychologists, the exploration of East-West ways of thinking can provide evidence of cultural influences from the perspective of inherent assumptions, thus contributing to our deeper understanding of our own culture.

Fourth, from the way of thinking to understand the influence of Eastern and Western cultures

Professor Nisbett of the University of Michigan in the United States and his students use "thinking geography" to explain the differences between Eastern and Western cultures and their influence. In his view, the development of Eastern and Western cultures have their own trajectories: Western civilization is built on the tradition of ancient Greece, and is characterized by Aristotelian logical thinking, while Eastern culture, represented by China, is built on the Eastern traditions y influenced by Confucianism and Taoism, and is mainly characterized by dialectical thinking. The Chinese concept of dialectical thinking contains three principles: the theory of change, the theory of contradiction and the theory of neutralization. The theory of change starts from the changeability of the world, that the world is always in a state of change and there is no eternal right and wrong; the theory of contradiction holds that everything is a contradictory unity consisting of opposites, and that without contradiction there can be no thing in itself, and the theory of neutrality is embodied in the Middle Way, which holds that there exists a modicum of reasonableness in everything. Unlike the Chinese, Americans believe more in Aristotle's formal logical thinking, which emphasizes the unity, non-contradiction, and exclusion of the world. People subject to this way of thinking believe that a proposition cannot be right or wrong at the same time; it is either right or wrong, with no in-between. For the Chinese, the "middle way", after thousands of years of historical accumulation, has even been internalized into the character traits of the Chinese people. Mr. Lu Xun once commented on this: "Chinese people always like to reconcile and compromise. For example, if you say that the room is too dark and a window must be opened here, people will not allow it. But if you advocate removing the roof of the house, they will come to reconcile and be willing to open a window. Without a drastic advocate, they are always not even feasible for a peaceful reform." Mr. Lu Xun is talking here about the negative side of the Middle Way, but of course it has a positive side as well. It enables one to avoid extremity and one-sidedness, and to rationalize thought and behavior.

In contrast to Westerners, Chinese people like to analyze problems from a holistic perspective, emphasizing connections and relationships between things, whereas Westerners, especially Americans, tend to consider problems in isolation from a larger context, looking at the characteristics of other people or things in their own right. Nisbett et al. have found that Chinese people tend to perceive things in a way that fails to isolate the individual thing from the context in which it is placed. For example, when completing the Rod-and-Frame experiment, Chinese people performed worse than Americans, mainly because they viewed the context and the judgmental goal as a whole. This holistic epistemology affects Chinese people's social life to a great extent, which makes Chinese people tend to relate a person's life background, family origin and surroundings when evaluating other people, instead of evaluating the characteristics of the person himself. This often results in over-exaggerating the role of the environment and ignoring the role of the individual.

Unlike the Chinese, Westerners tend to emphasize the role of individuality first and foremost, and when dealing with objects, they separate an object from the context in which it is located, ignoring the role of the environment in which it is located. This explains some phenomena in the development of science, as Joseph Needham, a British historian of science, noted that the Chinese recognized the concepts of "field" and "remote force" long ago, 1500 years before the Westerners did. 1500 years before Westerners. Unfortunately, modern electromagnetism and quantum mechanics were developed by the latter, and Needham believes that this is mainly due to the holistic nature of Chinese thinking. As we know, both electromagnetism and quantum mechanics require the decomposition of forces.

Nisbett et al.'s work has led to a deeper consideration of Eastern and Western cultures and their influences in the psychological community, and their conclusions are relatively more rational than previous studies because they are based on experimental evidence rather than on discursive theories. Most importantly, Nisbett's theory does not evaluate the influence of Eastern or Western cultures from the perspective of values, but argues that such differences have been in existence for a long time, thus providing support for the theory of cultural pluralism, that any culture comes from a certain tradition, and that cultures can influence each other, but that one culture can never replace another. Times are progressing and cultures are evolving. The purpose of cultural psychology research is not only to recognize the strengths and weaknesses of our own culture from comparison, but also to serve the inheritance and creation of a good and vital culture. It is believed that as psychology and many other disciplines pay more attention to Chinese culture, the excellent cultural traditions of the Chinese nation will certainly make greater contributions to world civilization.

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